College student from Brunswick loves the ground golfers walk on

BRUNSWICK, Ga. - Golf fans at the McGladrey Classic, which finished Sunday on the Sea Island Golf Club Seaside Course, were interested in the PGA Tour players whose names were on the leaderboards.

One college senior was more interested in the ground the players walked on.

James Vining Jr., 21, of Brunswick was one of six Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College students who were on the course working each day before the players teed up their first shots.

"We Stimped the greens,'' Vining said.

That's shorthand for using a Stimpmeter to ensure that all the greens are running at uniform speeds. Named for its creator, Edward S. Stimpson, the Stimpmeter is a 36-inch-long aluminum bar with a V-shaped groove that releases a golf ball. Testers, such as Vining, then check the distance the ball rolls when released and record the number. They were on the greens from 5 until 8 in the morning and from 5 until 8 in the evening.

"It's one of the best experiences I've had in turf management,'' Vining said of his misunderstood major of turf and golf course management. "People ask, 'What's that? You just mow grass?' "

Golf course superintendents all know mowing is among the least of the worries, as does Vining.

Most people wouldn't like his predawn work hours, but he said there's an advantage. While TV commentators and others raved about the spectacular scenery on Seaside, Vining said he saw the course when it looked better.

"I was out there when the sun came up across it,'' when the dew was still on the grass, he said. "It was beautiful."

The other students who worked the McGladrey had all left by Monday, but Vining stayed with his grandmother, Priscilla Easton, who works as the registrar's assistant at Brunswick High School, where she is known uniformly as Miss P.

Had it not been for a bad school system, Vining might not have ended up where he is.

"He came to me when he was 13,'' Easton said. "My son said, 'Mom. You've got to take my son.' "

Her son, James Vining, didn't want his son to attend the schools in Newark, N.J., where they lived, because the schools were considered poor and violent, Easton said.

Easton said she willingly took in her grandson and enrolled him in Brunswick High, where she was already working and where he was a good student and played football.

Vining said he got no offers to play football in college, but when he visited Abraham Baldwin Agricultural College, he was impressed by the "Turf Club," a students' organization, and applied for admission.

"I wanted to do something that meant a lot to the game,'' and working on the playing fields and courses meets that desire, he said.

In 2009, he was the grounds intern for the Jacksonville Suns, said Edward Attalla, director of field operation for the Suns.

"He did everything, mowed, drug the infield, put down the lines. He wants to be like me someday,'' Attalla joked.

He called Vining a hard worker and "a good dude."

Vining was at Brunswick High on Monday to get a letter of recommendation from one of his former teachers. He's vying for an invitation to the Super Bowl in a contest sponsored by Toro, maker of mowers, irrigation components and other turf equipment.

There, Vining would get to see George Toma at work. Toma is among the foremost experts in managing the turfs on playing fields and gets commissioned for Super Bowls.

He met Toma once before, at the Sports Turf Management Association Conference in Orlando, and hopes to meet him again at this year's meeting.

As for where he wants to work, Vining said he would go about anywhere he's wanted, from golf courses to football fields to baseball fields.

He speaks well of his teachers at Brunswick High but said having his grandmother in the building kept him on his best behavior. He said he is grateful every day his grandparents let him come live with them.

"She pushed me. She motivated me,'' Vining said of Easton. "She just wanted me to do my best."

Vining hugged his grandma before heading down the hall to see his former teacher, and before he left her office, he did what any good grandson would do: He grabbed a handful of candy from a bowl on her desk.

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